Knowing the Paths of Pilgrimage the Network of Pilgrimage Routes in Nineteenth-Century China

review of Religion and chinese society 3 (2016) 189-222 Knowing the Paths of Pilgrimage The Network of Pilgrimage Routes in Nineteenth-Century China Marcus Bingenheimer Temple University [email protected] Abstract In the early nineteenth century the monk Ruhai Xiancheng 如海顯承 traveled through China and wrote a route book recording China’s most famous pilgrimage routes. Knowing the Paths of Pilgrimage (Canxue zhijin 參學知津) describes, station by station, fifty-six pilgrimage routes, many converging on famous mountains and urban centers. It is the only known route book that was authored by a monk and, besides the descriptions of the routes themselves, Knowing the Paths contains information about why and how Buddhists went on pilgrimage in late imperial China. Knowing the Paths was published without maps, but by geo-referencing the main stations for each route we are now able to map an extensive network of monastic pilgrimage routes in the nineteenth century. Though most of the places mentioned are Buddhist sites, Knowing the Paths also guides travelers to the five marchmounts, popular Daoist sites such as Mount Wudang, Confucian places of worship such as Qufu, and other famous places. The routes in Knowing the Paths traverse not only the whole of the country’s geogra- phy, but also the whole spectrum of sacred places in China. Keywords Knowing the Paths of Pilgrimage – pilgrimage route book – Qing Buddhism – Ruhai Xiancheng – “Ten Essentials of Pilgrimage” 初探«參學知津»的19世紀行腳僧人路線網絡摘要十九世紀早期，如海顯承和尚在遊歷中國後寫了一本關於中國一些最著名的朝聖之路的路線紀錄。這本「參學知津」（朝聖之路指引）一站一站地 © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi 10.1163/22143955-00302004 <UN> 190 Bingenheimer 描述了五十六條朝聖路線，含括著名的山岳與城鎮。此為目前已知的唯一一本由僧侶著述的路線紀錄，不僅詳述每條路線，且說明在中國晚清時期僧侶們如何與為何踏上朝聖之旅。本書在出版時不含地圖。藉由路線上主要地標彼此之相關地理訊息，我們能深入描繪十九世紀時的寺廟朝聖網路。雖然本書主要描述的是佛教聖地，但也指引旅人關於五嶽、著名道教聖地武當山、儒家朝聖之地曲阜、與其他名勝。「參學知津」裡描述的路線不僅橫貫整個國家的地理版圖，也展現了中國聖地的完整圖譜。關鍵詞朝山，路程一覽，朝山十要，參學知津，如海顯承，清代佛教 … Certainly no student of Chinese life can hope to arrive at a sympathet- ic understanding of existing religious conditions in China unless he is prepared to become—if only imaginatively—a member of one of those merit-making (and merry-making) bands of pilgrims who annually traverse the plains of China on their way to the Sacred Hills and the wonder- working shrines of pusas and “immortals.” —Reginald F. Johnston (1913: 127) ∵ Introduction In the study of Chinese Buddhist history, the decades from 1800 to 1870 are like the white spaces, the terrae incognitae, on nineteenth-century maps. We know very little about either the institutional or the popular Buddhism of that period. For various reasons, the study of Chinese Buddhism has focused much of its attention on the first millennium. As a result, there is more research on Chinese Buddhism between 800 and 870 than about the time between 1800 and 1870, although arguably we have more data for the latter. Regarding Buddhism in late imperial China, Ming Buddhism is better studied than Buddhism under the Qing, partly because of broad general interest in late Ming culture. Where we do have studies of Qing Buddhism, they often focus on the religious policy review of Religion and chinese society 3 (2016) 189-222 <UN> Knowing the Paths of Pilgrimage 191 of the mighty emperors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the presence and influence of Tibetan Buddhism in China.1 A certain amount of work has been done on the late Qing, which the work of Holmes Welch marked as a time of “revival” that was directly connected with the Buddhism of the early Republic. The late Qing revival is associated especially with the activities of Yang Wenhui 楊文會 (1837–1911), who established the Jinling Sutra Publishing House 金陵刻經處 (1866) and the Buddhist Research Society 佛學研究會 (1910).2 An unintentional effect of Welch’s groundbreaking work was that the decades before Yang Wenhui were not deemed important enough to warrant more detailed studies. Between Qianlong and his sophisticated religious policy and the revival of Buddhism after the Taiping civil war, the early decades of the nineteenth century remain quite forgotten. Another lacuna in the study of Chinese Buddhism concerns monastic pilgrimage in late imperial China.3 We take it for granted that monks move about. In the first millennium, Indian, Central Asian, and later Chinese monks fol- lowed the trade routes when traveling between India and China. One of the best documented of these journeys, Xuanzang’s travels in the “Western Regions,” 1 Research on this topic and the gis applications needed to visualize Xiancheng’s routes were conducted at Nagoya University, which hosted me as a visiting researcher in Fall 2015. I am especially grateful to Professor Katsufumi Narita, who invited me back to my alma mater after many years. I am indebted to Timothy Brook, who studied the Canxue zhijin in the 1980s and generously shared his research notes. Many thanks to the Library for Chinese Studies at the University of Heidelberg for providing a scan of the text, as well as to Douglas Gildow, Meijun Liu, and two anonymous reviewers for important suggestions and corrections. Most of the coordinate data on which the maps are based was collected by Boyong Zhang, who has always shared my enthusiasm for gis-based visualization.An overview article states that “compared to the study of Qing history, society, and philosophy, research on Buddhism Qing dynasty Buddhism is woefully lacking” (Qiu 2003:1). In the last twelve years a number of important publications (Berger 2003, Tuttle 2005, Tuttle and Elverskog 2011) have ameliorated this relative dearth, but compared to the size of the available data the imbalance between our knowledge of Chinese Buddhism of the first millennium and that of the second millennium remains. 2 The fame of Yang Wenhui is in a way symptomatic of the lack of scholarship on the period. While Yang is mentioned in every work on the period, the equally interesting Zheng Chengde 鄭澄德 (1826–1880) (also known as Shi Miaokong 釋妙空), who printed sutras in Yangzhou starting in 1866, has been largely forgotten. 3 One of the few studies on the topic, Jiang 2009 contains a number of useful canonical references. review of Religion and chinese society 3 (2016) 189-222 <UN> 192 Bingenheimer inspired one of the most beloved works of Chinese literature. Furthermore, every student of Chinese Buddhism is familiar with the motif of the Chan monk who visits a famous master to further his understanding. Huineng’s journey to Hongren is only one of many student-master encounters that presume that the student is passing through. Although the popularity of the practice must have fluctuated over the centuries, it was always present in the fabric of Chinese Buddhism. Nevertheless, we know relatively little about monastic travel in the Ming and Qing. The terms that were used most often for monastic pilgrimage since the Song are canxue 參學 and xingjiao 行腳.4 Canxue implies visiting a master or a famous site to study and train in meditation. In principle, canxue could also be done by lay people, but it has a more professional ring to it than chaoshan 朝山, the word for mountain pilgrimage that is generally used for lay pilgrims. In practice, the two overlapped. Monks on canxue would visit holy mountains for their scenic beauty, and at least some lay visitors on chaoshan would have heard sermons from the resident monks and asked religious questions. In principle, monks and sometimes lay people were allowed to stay in the guest quarters of monasteries overnight.5 Monks could expect to find shelter and simple fare even in smaller temples. In his study of Chinese Buddhism, Holmes Welch (1967:303) has described the period of wandering as “a most important phase in a monk’s career.” From the testimony of Welch’s informants, we know that monks in the late Qing 4 The term xingjiao seems to have originated in the Chan school and appears widely in yulu literature of the Ming and Qing. It is first explained as part of Chan practice in the Zuting shiyuan 祖庭事苑 glossary (ca. 1100 ce) (cbeta/x.64.1261.432c19). Earlier, in translations of Indian texts, “wandering” was often rendered as youfang 遊方. The term yunshui 雲水 ([moving about like] clouds and water) too became popular in the Song and from there was adopted into Japanese Buddhism (unsui), where it has been used prominently for the wandering stage in the life of a Zen monk. Xiancheng uses the term yunshui only once, and rather disparagingly (Knowing the Paths 卷首:7b). In the Ming and Qing the preferred terms for “monastic pilgrim” were xingzhe 行者 and toutuo 頭陀 (“ascetic,” from Skr. dhūta). Yunshui was sometimes used in the word yunshui tang 雲水堂 for “guest quarter” (Prip-Møller [1937] 1967:370), which was more commonly called ketang 客堂. In Chinese poetry, terms such as yunyou 雲遊 “cloud traveling” were also used at times for monastic pilgrimage. 5 We have a relatively clear picture of how the ketang in large monasteries were run in the first half of the twentieth century (Welch 1967:10–16, Prip-Møller [1937] 1967:98–103). For a rare photo of the inside of a guest quarter, see Prip-Møller 1967:137. Nevertheless we still lack a detailed study of the development of the monastic rules and guidelines concerning wandering monks. Large monasteries were even able to accommodate lay people. Prip-Møller (139) mentions that some were able to accommodate close to a thousand pilgrims at night. review of Religion and chinese society 3 (2016) 189-222 <UN> Knowing the Paths of Pilgrimage 193 and early Republican period did travel far and wide, and that monasteries had guest quarters that could accommodate dozens, even hundreds, of pilgrims.

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